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Multiple-key merges arise when more than one variable is required to uniquely identify the observations in your data. In Merging data, part 1, I discussed single-key merges such as

. merge 1:1 personid using ...

In that discussion, each observation in the dataset could be uniquely identified on the basis of a single variable. In panel or longitudinal datasets, there are multiple observations on each person or thing and to uniquely identify the observations, we need at least two key variables, such as Read more…

Merging concerns combining datasets on the same observations to produce a result with more variables. We will call the datasets one.dta and two.dta.

When it comes to combining datasets, the alternative to merging is appending, which is combining datasets on the same variables to produce a result with more observations. Appending datasets is not the subject for today. But just to fix ideas, appending looks like this: Read more…